Opportunities in the printing process

Inline finishing in sheet-fed offset printing is one of the opportunities for making the job printing process even more effective and economical. As this market in particular continues to shrink, it is necessary to keep an eye at all times on industrialisation of the further inline processing of the creasing, diecutting and perforation process says CITO product manager Roberto Croci in the conversation with Deutscher Drucker.

Interview with Roberto Croci, Product manager and expert in PrintLine at CITO‑SYSTEM GmbH

What solutions and options does CITO offer here?

» CITO is the top address worldwide for inline finishing on sheet-fed printing machines. Starting with older and smaller machines through to the new and large printing machines, CITO offers printers a wide range of products to enable them to complete even the most sophisticated job with maximum machine speed. The purpose is always to offer the customer the best solution, so that the print product can be upgraded. In this way, despite the prevailing competitive pressure on the market, very good profits can still be achieved. And last but not least, in the decision to purchase a printing machine, for many printers a very important factor is whether the machine can be equipped with an RSP System 2.0. «

Why inline? Why not further process offline?

» There are many techniques, to do perforations or impressions and each individual method has its own specific advantages and disadvantages. Inline finishing offers the major advantage of integrating an additional, cost-intensive work operation into the printing processes and thus to save costs and produce more economically. Although the possibilities are always greater offline, considerable additional work and thus costs must also be taken into consideration with offline techniques. Even in inline processes there are significant differences.  «

What do you mean by »differences«?

» To name an example: a customer changed over to our RSP system and used our specially developed ink-repellent protective impression cylinder jackets to perforate around 450,000 sheets on matt coated illustration printing paper, which was printed on both sides. Thanks to CITO’s ink-repellent protective impression cylinder jackets for perfecting presses, the customer was able to produce the job without additional stops during production - and more than a complete shift on the printing machine was saved. In addition, by preventing the build-up of colour, the quality of the printed product was improved significantly! This is a clear advantage over other systems! «

Despite digital printing, does such a system have a future?

» Yes, definitely! The print runs in the example named above in format 70 × 100 cm cannot be achieved economically using digital printing, especially not with creasing, diecutting or perforation. CITO‑SYSTEM GmbH works continuously with machine manufacturers to produce joint solutions for the latest generation. For example, the development of an inline finishing solution for HEIDELBERG Primefire has already been completed and will be launched on the market very soon. « 

Translation of interview „Opportunities in the printing process“, from the special publication for Print Finishing “Druckweiterverarbeitung” Deutscher Drucker, issue 13-14/2018